This custom taxonomy has a hyphen instead of an underscore in its name. So that means when I try to echo it the hyphen prevents me from referencing it properly like here:

echo '<li><i class="icon-heart"></i> '.$user-categories.'</li>';

In Coda 2 the hyphen turns blue and the word "categories" stops being purple (yes, I know I sound like a complete noob right now). I've looked around the net for a way to get the echo line to work, but everything I've tried has returned nothing.